Monroe County's homeless: Through the cracks and under the bridge

Sunday

Feb 24, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 21, 2013 at 9:36 AM

Dressed in hunter's camouflage with his hood pulled up over a knitted hat, a homeless man identified only as "Bruce" stood on the East Stroudsburg side of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, watching fire and ambulance personnel carry his friend on a stretcher from under the bridge Thursday morning.

ANDREW SCOTT

Dressed in hunter's camouflage with his hood pulled up over a knitted hat, a homeless man identified only as "Bruce" stood on the East Stroudsburg side of the Veterans Memorial Bridge, watching fire and ambulance personnel carry his friend on a stretcher from under the bridge Thursday morning.

Bruce identified his friend on the stretcher as Gary Foley.

The two had been living with other homeless people under the bridge on and off for the past two years.

Bruce said he had spent the night at East Stroudsburg United Methodist Church, one of two area churches opening its doors to the homeless on winter nights when the nearby Salvation Army shelter has no more room.

"I came out here to the bridge around 7 or 8 this morning to check on Gary," he said. "I don't know if he spent the night under the bridge."

The bridge spans Brodhead Creek between East Stroudsburg and Stroudsburg boroughs.

When it's not too cold out, the homeless stay where the top of the levee meets the underside of the bridge on either side.

"When I got under the bridge, I saw Gary had fallen off his mattress and rolled part-way down the levee bank toward the creek," Bruce said. "I woke him up and walked him back to his mattress and then I left. When I came back out here again (at about 11:45 a.m.), I saw he'd fallen off again and rolled even farther down the bank, but this time he didn't answer when I tried to wake him up."

Bruce had a passer-by call 911, and fire and ambulance personnel responded.

"He was unresponsive, but he's conscious now," Stroudsburg Fire Chief Todd Martin said, watching Foley being loaded into the back of an ambulance to be taken to Pocono Medical Center.

For the area's homeless, it's another day of life under the bridge.

Under the bridge on both sides, discarded junk, makeshift mattresses, empty bottles and food containers and trash bags and cardboard boxes filled with old clothes and rags clutter the ground.

On the Stroudsburg side, a tarp hanging from rods encloses a discarded commode.

A miniature Christmas tree sits atop an old stereo speaker not far from a trash can with a box on top.

On a concrete ledge sit bottles, cans, jars, snack boxes and a pot on a makeshift stove.

Nearby stands a windbreak put together from two discarded doors with windows and discarded sections of Sheetrock.

The underside of the bridge has been blackened by past fires lit to cook or stay warm, while graffiti, including the word "sinner," is prominent on the wall and beams.

"Not all of that stuff you see under the bridge was put there by the homeless," John Studeny, who has lived under the bridge, said Wednesday night at the East Stroudsburg United Methodist Church shelter. "A lot of it is from people throwing stuff away or people who can't store things anywhere else."

Either way, "this is something we just can't have," Stroud Area Regional Police Capt. Brian Kimmins said. "It's unsanitary, and conditions like that draw rodents."

These conditions are what a SARP officer saw when responding at about 6 p.m. Sunday to a call about a man throwing items over the side of the bridge.

"It turns out he was throwing recyclables down to the homeless under the bridge for them to make money off of," Kimmins said. "The officer went down, checked it out and saw how bad it is. It's basically a homeless camp.

"The officer put the people there on notice that they're going to be told to leave, but not right away," he said. "We're not heartless. We know these people have nowhere else to go. We're going to reach out to local agencies and churches to see if shelter can be found for these folks."

And not only because of the unhealthy conditions of living under a bridge.

"We inspected the bridge last year and found the fires homeless people had been setting under there were threatening the structural safety of the bridge, so we asked police if something could be done," said Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Sean Brown. "We're sympathetic to the homeless, but at the same time we have to consider the structural safety of a bridge the public travels on."

Working with the homeless, Faith Kimes, wife of the Rev. Edward Kimes at East Stroudsburg United Methodist Church, said the homeless have stopped lighting fires under the bridge since the police communicated PennDOT's concerns. Kimes said the homeless people she's been working with try to prevent causing a nuisance.

This isn't the first time the police department, which covers Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg boroughs and Stroud Township, has put a homeless camp on notice about disbanding.

"There was a camp in 2004 off Braeside Avenue, near the railroad tracks, in East Stroudsburg," Kimmins said. "The homeless were carrying bags of trash through neighbors' yards. It was summer, so you had the smell and the vermin attracted by the trash. There were also the occasional incidents of petty crime and drunkenness."

Similar concerns surrounded a camp under the Seventh Street bridge in Stroudsburg prior to 2000.

"We've had squatters and people breaking into stores and homes," Kimmins said. "Not all homeless are into disruptive or destructive behavior, but it's definitely a concern when we get calls involving violence or disorderliness."

Those doing what they can to help the homeless cite jobs and more permanent transitional housing among top needs.

"The (East Stroudsburg) Salvation Army has a shelter, but you can only stay there for 30 days, and you can't go back there again until after a year has passed," Kimes said.

East Stroudsburg United Methodist and Stroudsburg Wesleyan churches have shelters where the homeless can spend winter nights.

"Some of these people are our friends and attend services here," said the Rev. Lynda Keefer at Stroudsburg Wesleyan Church. "It breaks our hearts when it gets too cold out and we hear of people sleeping outdoors."

While important, more shelters and permanent transitional housing are meaningless without a change in the mentality of some homeless people, said East Stroudsburg Salvation Army shelter director Edward Smith.

"Some end up homeless because they don't even have high school diplomas," Smith said. "Without a high school education and at least an associate's degree, they can't get the kind of job they need to sustain themselves."

With 12 single-male beds, six single-female beds and four family units, the Salvation Army shelter has rules, including no alcoholic beverages or smoking, Smith said.

The shelter works with those who are homeless as a result of being laid off or never having had steady employment.

"I believe, on average, about 10 percent of our clients have mental health issues," said Salvation Army Maj. James Gingrich. "(Smith) works to get them needed services while they reside in our shelter. We refer people with drug and alcohol addictions to local resources as well as the Salvation Army Adult Rehab Center in Wilkes-Barre, which serves our area."

Smith said the homeless aren't encouraged to hang around at the shelter during the day time.

"We encourage them to job-hunt, coach them on writing resumes and encourage them to go out on job interviews," Smith said.

"We talk to them at the end of each day to find out what they did and how successful they were in looking for work.

"The problem is the mentality of some people who don't want to find work or get their high school GEDs," he said. "Those are the ones who don't come here to the shelter because they know they can't follow our rules. They have to want something better for themselves, otherwise all the shelter and transitional housing in the world won't help them."